Free The Lost Temple by Tom Harper

gaze fixed on her until, with a discreet cough, he asked, “What’s this got to do with the writing in the journal?”
    “The Minoans left more than just ruins and artifacts. They left us their writing. There were two forms—a primitive one, which Evans named Linear A, and a later development he named Linear B. Most of the examples were found scratched into clay tablets, which baked when the palace burned down.”
    “And what do they say?”
    “No one knows—no one’s ever been able to decipher them. It’s one of the greatest mysteries of archaeology.”
    Grant looked back at the book. “Did Pemberton ever try to crack it?”
    “You couldn’t work in this field and not try. To the archaeologists it was like a crossword or a riddle, somethingto puzzle over on winter evenings by the fire. As far as I know, Pemberton never made any breakthrough.”
    “What about in the book?”
    “No.” She turned through a few pages. “It’s too neat. He’s copied some inscriptions, but there’s no attempt to translate them.”
    “What about that?” Grant stabbed a finger into the book and held down the page. Above a few lines of the angular Linear B script, the page was filled by a simple line drawing. It looked almost like something a child might have drawn: two triangles flanked a small spiked box, with two rows of jagged lines running below. At the top, in the center of the page, some sort of stylized animal seemed to float above a rounded dome, with birds on either side.
    “It must be Minoan,” murmured Marina. “But I’ve never seen it before. It wasn’t in the collection at Knossos.” She turned to the next page. It was empty, except for four lines of Greek. After that, the book was blank.
    “What does the Greek say?” asked Grant.
“
Now here, now there, the carcasses they tore:
Fate stalk’d amidst them, grim with human gore.
And the whole war came out, and met the eye;
And each bold figure seem’d to live or die.
”
    Perhaps it was the smoke blowing from the fire, but Marina’s voice was hoarse and tears rimmed her eyes. “It’s Homer. The
Iliad
. Pemberton must have been reading it when the Nazis came. It was the last thing he ever wrote. Nothing to do with the picture.” She turned back to the previous page and stared hard at the sketch, as if by the effort she could burn away her tears. “The iconography . . .” She took a deep breath. “The iconography seems to date it as middle to late Minoan. The zigzag lines are probably purely decorative, though some might see them as denoting water. The animal at the top . . .” She squinted, holding the book out to the fire. “Maybe a lion or a sphinx—either way, it would symbolize a protector or guardian. Possible royalconnections as well. The birds are doves, which usually signifies place sanctity. In this case the identification is supported by the shrine in the center of the image.”
    “How do you know it’s a shrine?”
    “The bull horns on top. It’s a standard depiction of a Minoan shrine. Like how a cross on top of a building tells you it’s a church.”
    Marina stared into the flames. Whether she was puzzling over the image or thinking of Pemberton, Grant didn’t know, but he pulled the book away before she dropped it in the fire. He looked at the picture—then rested the book on his knee and forced the pages flat. The spine cracked in protest and Marina looked up.
    “Be careful.”
    “What does . . .” Grant licked his lips as he picked out the unfamiliar letters. “
Pha
. . .
raggi
. . .
ton
. . .
nekron
mean?”
    “
Pharangi ton nekron
? Where do you see that?”
    Grant held it up to show her. On the inside of the page, almost buried in the crease of the binding, three Greek words were written vertically down the side of the picture. Marina snatched the book from him and stared.
    “Of course,” she murmured. “
Pharangi ton Nekron.
”
    “Who’s he?”
    “It’s a place—a valley. On the east coast, near a